Most of us call it “social media marketing,” but Spredfast calls it “social business.” A major marketing software giant, Spredfast doesn’t just think social media is about marketing anymore. They know it’s about how business is done. And they’re right.

Going beyond just marketing, Spredfast understands that social media is also about “sales, support, promotions” and engagement. And they also see the one thing that most failed social media campaigns don’t – that this is no easy task.

Any business involved in a social media campaign and equipped with a smart marketing director will know that social media isn't just about existing in social platforms. It’s about scale, planning and implementation. This right here is the difference between a business that lasts the cliché 1-2 years before collapsing and the business that keeps going; they invest in a marketing director.

Yet a lot of small businesses can’t afford a marketing department, which is completely understandable. In this case, a business owner should invest in two things: 1) a great marketing manager and 2) tools to turn one man into five.

Spredfast highlights five key points to a successful brand awareness campaign. The first is consistency, which is not only critical but incredibly difficult to keep up with in light of all the popular applications. Spredfast solves the problem by letting you schedule posts across more than 14 different social networks and create an editorial calendar with scheduled posts so you’re not wasting your time on this task daily. Beyond this must-have perk, users can create customized Facebook tabs, keep track of analytics that help you gauge the most successful path, manage multiple accounts from content-generating departments in your business and access a social inbox to track outside dialogue about your company.

The ultimate goal of any social business-driven campaign is to generate leads. To target leads, published content can be geography specific. Facebook tabs can create fun and engaging content/surveys and quizzes that direct traffic back to your site. Analytics helps you gauge your audience so content generators can create targeted content; and the social inbox helps you also track your competition, potential brand advocates and industry trends.

There are a few tells that show why Spredfast is so successful, including: 1) creating a social inbox so you know what the social media buzz is, 2) managing workflow so you can target priority projects, and 3) offering a content library so you can coordinate content and house documents/ videos and images. These features tell me that Spredfast really thought about the end-users' needs. They didn’t just think about delivery, but about how you’re going to get there. A marriage between the needs of content managers, paired with the tools and metrics needed for social media marketers, is what makes Spredfast such a flawless product.

It’s no wonder that Mashable’s named it one of the top five social media management tools, along with Tweetdeck, CoTweet, Hootsuite and Engage121. There’s no specific industry best-suited for this software; anyone from a one man startup insurance company to a Fortune 500 company can benefit what Spredfast has to offer. Big name companies like Nokia and AARP are currently using Spredfast; so are international PR agencies like Porter Novelli and more niche-specific companies like travel manager HomeAway.

If you’re thinking about going with Spredfast, I’d check out the social media “business” campaigns of these top users. Ask yourself “what are they all doing, how are they doing it and what are they doing differently?”